


Frustratingly Easy and Surprisingly Difficult

by igiveup101



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, there's some torture but it's all vague or offscreen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 08:35:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4739855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igiveup101/pseuds/igiveup101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McKay gets captured and tortured. He's not what his captors expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frustratingly Easy and Surprisingly Difficult

In the time that they’d had him, Lutecia had not learned any of what she had hoped to, but she had learned that Dr. McKay was both frustratingly easy and surprisingly difficult to break. They’d left him all of his things that they were certain were not weapons, to see what he would do with them, but all he did with them was fiddle with a few relatively small objects that went dark when Lutecia took them.

He was, physically speaking, alarmingly fragile. They’d hoped to weaken him for the first session by withholding food for some time, but not long enough to starve him to death. This plan did not work as expected, as only a few hours later, he was sweating, then shaking, then convulsing. They had to stuff food into him for quite some time before the stubborn man would wake up.

Another night, after they fed him a meal, he began gasping and turning red before stabbing himself with a cylindrical object and then ingesting mysterious small tablets. The Lucifenians could not understand the purpose or meaning of this strange ritual; they had never seen Dr. McKay or any other prisoner do anything like it before. The scientist refused to eat any more of that meal, and shook for the rest of the night. Lutecia thought it was perhaps a bizarre way to avoid eating foods that were not to your taste, but she did not believe it was currently Dr. McKay’s place to decide what he did or did not want to eat.

Almost worse than that, he did not behave the way the other Atlantean they’d had did. He did not act like any prisoner they’d had before, in fact. He did not bother stifling screams or sobs as the others did. Yet at the same time, gasping through tears and blood, he continued to insult Lutecia’s men and make jokes at their expense, even knowing that he’d only be punished further.

He attempted to use his clothing to bandage wounds, as every other prisoner had, but he was exceptionally bad at it. Bandages were often loose and changed too often for the small amount of material, and too little pressure was applied. He wasted precious water cleaning the wounds. When asked why, he angrily told her that at the very least he’d like to avoid having to amputate his own arm. Lutecia told him that, by the looks of it, he would never use the arm again- and would hardly need to, where he was now- but that only made him turn red again and yell. Only several swift blows to the head were enough to quiet him.

However, despite his obvious weakness and fragility, he refused to give her any useful information regarding Atlantis. He spoke- or babbled, more accurately- at length of men with names like Luke Skywalker, a large ship called the Millenium Falcon, and what was known, frighteningly, as a death star. He never mentioned Atlantis during any of this, or anyone the Lucifenians had heard of. None of their sources knew of any Luke Skywalker, or Han Solo, and Lutecia only considered this confirmation of her suspicion that the frustrating man was lying to them.

No matter how hard she tried, she could not understand him. She did not understand what so motivated him not to betray Atlantis, regardless of what her men did to him, even though the entire day before they took him he spent arguing and trading insults with John Sheppard, military commander and team leader. She did not understand why he continued to infuriate the guards when all it earned him was another beating. She did not understand why a person supposedly so intelligent bandaged his wounds so poorly, or, at this point, why he bothered bandaging them at all- as if all of the strips of what used to be a shirt weren’t already died red with blood.

Most of all, she did not understand why, when she declared that his lack of compliance had made him worthless and ordered her guards to beat him to death, his reaction- after flinching away and exclaiming “ _oh god_ ,”- was to smile.

Of all of the stupid, illogical things about Dr. McKay, this was by far the worst. Accordingly, she demanded to know why he was smiling.

“Sheppard likes saving rescues until the last minute, so he can waltz in and be a big damn hero. It’s an annoying but dependable habit of his.”

Frowning, she ordered her guards to begin. She left the room to the sounds of his screams.

\----------------

She wasn’t in her office when it happened.

Lutecia was at home, watching everything from a series of screens on the wall. She’d left quickly after condemning the scientist; she didn’t want her men to see her losing control of her temper. She watched, still, in case anything slipped out that she could use later, but it wasn’t seeming particularly likely.

When shots rang out from the speakers, she whirled towards the screens behind her in alarm. A large team of soldiers dressed in black were gunning down her men, led by a man with messy hair- _Sheppard_ , she realized. But that was ludicrous; regardless of what Dr. McKay may have said, this was too much of a coincidence. Was Dr. McKay right- was it planned this way? Or was he just incredibly fortunate?

Honestly, she was mildly surprised that anyone had come for Dr. McKay at all. She’d watched the two men argue endlessly, and after having spent over a week with him, she’d determined that she wouldn’t have so much as complained if someone were to take him off her hands.

Shocked and furious, she watched as the team advanced, slowly removing every obstacle- every _man_ \- from their path. By the time they reached the room holding Dr. McKay, it was almost empty. All of her men had left to defend the stronghold. All of her men had failed.

She knew what they saw opened the door. She knew every cut, every bruise, every break in his body. She knew what being suspended from the ceiling would do to his already broken arm. Still, in the moment, she wished heartily that they’d done much, much more. As she watched the men freeze for a moment before fully securing the room, she hoped deeply, _viscerally_ , that they’d leave him. That they’d return home. He would be little use to them now- she doubted he’d ever regain use of his right arm, and she was relatively certain she’d left him with a serious concussion, and maybe when they saw that, they’d leave him. Then she could exact some little revenge. She could never fight the entire team, they were much too large, but if they could _let her have this-_

But they didn’t. Instead, Colonel Sheppard rushed to the center of the room and ordered his men to cut McKay down. The scientist collapsed as soon as they did, but the Colonel caught him. McKay coughed and then, to Lutecia’s amazement, laughed softly. “ _About time, Han_.” Then his eyes rolled into the back of head and he went completely limp.

Fury ran its way through Lutecia’s veins. Even as he lay near death, even as all of her men lay lifeless outside the room, even as it all came to an end, he continued to perplex her completely. Why couldn’t the man make sense? Why couldn’t he just have given them the information they wanted? _How had they found him?_

It was too much. She turned and marched out of her house, grabbing a weapon. She made her way to a spot just outside the nearby facility, aiming her gun at the door. When the Atlanteans actually exited, though, she hesitated a moment in shock. Sheppard was half-walking-with, half-carrying the apparently reawoken- though barely- Dr. McKay, and the two appeared to be arguing again. Even as the two traded barbs, however, she could read barely-concealed worry in the Colonel’s eyes, and relief etched along the edges of pain in McKay’s.

****  
  


Outraged at yet another ridiculous inconsistency in the man who had now managed to cost her everything, Lutecia took a shot at the pair. She missed, by less than an inch, and didn’t have time to reload before she had a dozen or so guns aimed at her. She realized, belatedly, that this had been a very, very bad plan.

**  
**When Colonel Sheppard turned to her, she saw that his eyes had gone completely, terrifyingly dark. She didn’t have time to think about it, because a second after he looked at her, the world went black with the _pop_ of a fired gun.


End file.
